The vicious circle of poverty and injustice

Although the fundamental injustice of poverty cannot be
remedied by lawyers alone, legal aid is crucial to a fair and effective justice
system. No government that makes it harder for the poor to navigate through the
justice system can claim poverty reduction as a priority, says Kate Donald

Improving access to courts, lawyers, legal information for
the poor and marginalized is not just in the interests of ‘justice’ in the
abstract, but is fundamental for tackling poverty. This is the core message of the recent report
by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights to the United
Nations General Assembly. Across
developed and developing countries, the report emphasizes, people living in
poverty are prevented from accessing justice on an equal footing, thereby
entrenching and exacerbating their deprivation.

It is a powerful way to envisage effective access to justice
policies; not just as a right but also as a tool for reducing poverty and
inequality and fostering social inclusion. In this conception, legal aid is not
just a technical matter for a Ministry of Justice, but a matter of broader
socio-economic justice. No government that makes it harder for the poor to
navigate through the justice system can claim poverty reduction as a priority –
at least not with a straight face.

Too often, the public and policy-makers alike think of poverty as simply
a lack of income. In reality, it is a
multidimensional phenomenon encompassing a chronic lack of resources,
capabilities, choices, security and power, all building on each other in a
feedback loop of disadvantage. Therefore,
eradicating extreme poverty requires tackling all these aspects, as well as
improving access to basic goods such as housing, food, education, health
services and water and sanitation. Access to justice plays a crucial role in
all parts of this equation, as a fundamental human right in itself and
also an essential tool for the protection and promotion of all other civil,
cultural, economic political and social rights. If people living in poverty do
not have access to a remedy when their rights have been violated, or cannot
proactively claim their rights and entitlements, then their exclusion,
powerlessness and deprivation become entrenched.

The vicious circle
of poverty and injustice

People living in poverty are exceptionally vulnerable to
crime, abuse and exploitation. If they do not have the ability to take real and
effective recourse against these actions, then impunity and inequality is
perpetuated, and their vulnerability is exacerbated. Accountability becomes a
sham. Their increased vulnerability and exclusion
further hampers their ability to pursue justice; ad infinitum, spiralling down the generations.

Poverty will only be
defeated when the law works for everyone. Access to justice is crucial for tackling
the root causes of poverty, exclusion
and vulnerability. Effective and accessible
justice systems can be tools to develop progressive jurisprudence on economic
and social rights - mandating provision of affordable housing, enforcing the human rights of people living
in poverty,or by remedying their
exploitation by powerful public or private actors.

Access to justice is also
an important lever for gender equality. Women are more likely to be poor, both worldwide
and in the UK,
but women also face extra
burdens or obstacles in accessing justice mechanisms. Gender-based crimes and
abuses are often not well legislated for or effectively dealt with; public stigma and prejudice
also play a part in silencing abused women and preventing them from seeking
justice. Obstructed access to justice thus feeds the
cycle of gendered poverty and violence, and perpetuates impunity for
gender-based crimes.

Obstacles to accessing
justice

It is clear that the
sustained deprivations endemic to poverty translate into lower levels of legal
literacy and awareness of rights. Often, the battles of the poor remain
unfought because of the huge chasm in wealth, social capital and political
power between themselves and their ‘opponents’: those who should be accountable
to them, whose actions (or lack thereof) threaten their rights, bodily
integrity or livelihoods. A landlord, an employer, a local authority official;
a bank that mis-sold them a high-interest loan; a government that has removed
their disability benefit with one sweep of the pen. To challenge these powerful
figures requires resources (time, money, information) that are often lacking.

Legal aid is designed to
compensate for these vast gulfs in power and money. However, in nearly every country on earth the provision
of legal advice and representation is grossly insufficient. In parts of
Africa the
situation is dire. In 2011 Sierra Leone had only three lawyers available
through its legal aid programme; Malawi had eighteen. In the United States
one legal aid attorney is available for every 6,861 persons (while in contrast
there is one private attorney for every 525 people). The Legal Aid Society, the largest provider of legal services in
the United States, estimates
that it turns down eight out of every nine people who request advice and
assistance in civil legal matters.

Austerity and legal
aid

In many countries, the number of applications for civil legal aid has
risen, while resources allocated to legal aid have decreased as a result of
austerity measures. In Ireland, the number of applications for civil legal aid
rose by 84
per cent from 2007 to 2011 for non-asylum related matters, while resources
allocated to legal aid have decreased.
In the U.K., the Legal Aid Sentencing and Prevention of Offenders Act
2012 (‘LASPO’) will reduce government spending on legal aid by a quarter over
three years. As Roger Smith lamented in the JUSTICE
annual lecture, this will deal a death blow to a system
that has hereto “operated on the premise that the poor were entitled to, and
would progressively receive, legal services available to the rich.”

There is no doubting the drastic nature of these cuts, and
the serious and detrimental
impact they will have on equality and access to justice in the UK. The
Ministry of Justice estimates
that half a million potential clients will lose out, 90% of whom will lose
entitlement altogether. It is the already-poor and disadvantaged that will
suffer most. The cuts overwhelmingly affect family and social
welfare law; the Ministry accepts that it will therefore have a
disproportionate impact on women, on black and minority ethnic clients; and on
persons with disabilities. Without equal and meaningful access to legal advice
and representation, there is one justice for the rich and another for the poor.
The playing field of course is already skewed. These cuts will upend it on to a
far steeper gradient.

Many of the exclusions to legal aid (new and pre-existing) explicitly
discriminate against the poor. What other demographic so regularly and badly
needs to seek justice through housing and immigration proceedings, or welfare
appeal boards? People in Ireland seeking review of social welfare
decisions through the quasi-judicial Social Welfare Appeals Office cannot
access representation through the civil legal aid scheme, leaving them to
navigate a “bureaucratic and legal labyrinth” of
complex rules and technicalities alone. In the UK, representation before welfare
appeals was never covered by legal aid, but now LASPO means that no free legal
advice will be available for the often desperate and frequently disabled people
seeking welfare benefit reviews and appeals before first
tier tribunals.

Under international human
rights law, the British government has an obligation to ensure that the poor
can enjoy the rights to an effective remedy, equality before the courts and a
fair trial in practice, not just in
theory or in law. The opportunity for, and benefits of, justice should be
available to all. Today this is clearly not the case. Those who need
legal advice and assistance should be entitled to it as a right, not a matter
of charity. Although the fundamental
injustice of poverty cannot be remedied by lawyers alone, legal aid is crucial
to a fair and effective justice system and therefore to reducing poverty.

Slashing legal aid budgets in a time of recession is heaping
misery
on misery on the same victims, entrenching the two-tier nature of the
justice system and blocking the efforts of many people living in poverty to
seek remedy and fairness and a better life. ‘Justice’ does not exist in a silo;
as the American civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson memorably claims in his
now-viral TED
talk, “the opposite of poverty is not wealth…in too many places, the
opposite of poverty is justice.” Unfortunately, the UK is fast becoming one of
those places.

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